All About Your Child

Moving into the 2nd week of the 1 month school holiday and we had been out and about!

As usual, going Malaysia was top in our list. After a great movie in Johor Bahru, we gave a surprise visit to our ex-neighbour who had bought a landed property there. Beautiful corner terrace house they have and the kids LOVED it! *smile*

Weather had not been in our favour during the late afternoon ever since the holidays started, so going Legoland Malaysia for our 4th time is still on hold. We still love the idea of going in the late afternoon; less crowd and Mr Sun’s power also starts to diminish around 3.30-4pm.

[Ooops! This reminded me of my incomplete draft post on our 3rd visit there with my in-laws, 8 adults and 6 ‘wild’ kids going here and there and everywhere inside Legoland Malaysia! *sweat*]

So when we are at home, its bonding time through board games!

Decades ago, I was the one learning to play them. Now, using the EXACT same set of board games, I had become the one teaching Kitkit and Binbin on how to play them; the feeling……hhhhmmmm….its just so indescribable. But its definitely a good feeling and not that I am reminding myself that I have aged. *laugh*

Other than board games, there is time for Xbox, card games and just for this holiday, the four of us are ‘working together’ to make our restaurants in ‘Tiny Chef’ prosper.

Without the pressure of any school work, my boys, especially Kitkit can finally get enough rest. He can lie in bed for as long as he wants or till the sun shines on his butt.

This first week of June holiday had also given a long time blogger friend of mine, a chance to pop by my house. With her kids tagging along, it was ‘mad fun’ for more than 7 hours! *laugh*

In everything, there is good and bad. The ONE THING that I do not like during LONG school break is the seemingly endless bickering from the two youngest in the family.

Too Much Time Together, doing Similar Things within the four walls everyday….. Hhhhmmm….NOT totally good for siblings bonding though……

So just like in previous ‘LENGTHY‘ school holidays, I will sign them up for those 1-3 hours type of workshops. At least they get to learn a new skill or two and when they have a NEW TOPIC to talk about and being OUT of the house, the chances of them arguing has proven to decrease. *thumbs up*

Be it good or bad, I am definitely SEEING MORE GOOD than bad, ‘cos being there for them during their growing stages is something that money cannot buy. Totally Precious!

Hope you are taking time out to spend some quality bonding time with your child this school holiday too. Cheers!

School Holiday = EXTRA Bonding Time!

Its been slightly over a month that my boys started going for weekly soccer training. Ermmm… over this one month, Allan and I were there faithfully throughout the 2 hour period. However, I would not say that there is any proper training at all.

After simple warm-up exercises, some 30-40 kids were divided into 3 groups based on age. Each group were given a ball to have their own soccer match, with an assistant coach around them, to be referee and care-taker.

To me, a proper soccer training would look more like this (video below):

….whereby every kid were given a ball and the coach would teach a particular skill, eg, passing, dribbling, ball controlling, etc. But that was not seen during my boys’ soccer training.

Actually, it was more like a weekly get-together for kids who love to play soccer and could have a match or two with other children.

Well, we had been with this coach for one month plus only, so it might be too early to judge. Let’s see if there will be similar training as the above video for my boys, for the rest of this year. *shrugged*

Though I am hoping that there will be, I am still happy to see my boys playing their hearts out every week with their new-found soccer kakis.

This coach had been organising kids soccer tournament for previous years, but this is the first for my children.

The tournament starts at about 8.45am. When we were there at 8am, many of  coach’s students were already warming up in the court. His 2 ‘late‘ students were scrambling into their soccer boots so that they could join their soccer mates in the court.

Coach has yet to find a sponsor for the soccer team jersey, thus during my boys’ very first soccer tournament, coach’s instruction was to wear light blue or blue-coloured outfit as their team’s original jersey last year was light blue.

So while other teams were unified in the same jersey with one or two in other outfit (probably just joined the team), our team were in a sea of blue with different tones.

Thank goodness there were no other teams in any other shades of blue, otherwise it would be pretty difficult to spot their own teammates, especially when everyone is running so wildly for the ball, many would go for recognition of the jersey instead of the face, I think.

After a short 15mins of running around with their soccer mates, the assistant coach sat everyone down for a short briefing before the actual tournament began.

[PHOTO BELOW: Kitkit – facing the camera but not looking at me, with his chin resting on his hands. Binbin – right side of photo, looking at me, showing the ‘V’-sign.]

In total, the boys played 5 matches each. They were in different groups and Allan and I were busy filming them. There was once when the two groups were playing at the same time at different courts, Allan ended up filming Kitkit while I filmed Binbin, so that we could watch each other’s video and would not missed anything. *smile*

Will not be posting all the videos here. I have decided to post just one video each. Kitkit’s 2nd match and Binbin’s 1st match.

Kitkit had a great fall from trying to get the ball, but he was no Humpty Dumpty at all : at 3:55 in video below:

Binbin did a great pass to his team mate and resulted in a goal at 3:18 in video below:

I was pleasantly surprised to see THE OTHER TEAM which we were supposed to join earlier this year at the tournament. They did NOT CALL ME BACK, which they promised!!!! *Humph* Read post here “First Soccer Training – Complete Disappointment” as well as this follow up post.

Thank goodness we did not wait for them and decided to join this current team which had their training much further away from our home. Though its more time consuming due to the longer traveling time, it is good to know that our boys are having so much fun with this current coach.

Their team did not win the Gold nor the Silver. Every team which did not come in 1st or 2nd place received a Bronze trophy. Coach feels that every child is a winner so long as he participates and had fun, therefore, each kid went home with at least one trophy and that’s the Bronze.

Personally I think that is the BEST decision, as the trophy was all that matters to the younger players. *Super Wink*